Aaron Billings, Artist Spotlight No. 3

ARTIST STATEMENT

I grew up in Australia, as a first generation Irish migrant. I was a pansy back then and I am a pansy to this day. I identify as a gay artist, in the sense that I am gay and my work is very personal. I am inspired by early renaissance art (you know when it was all pagan and homo-erotic) and low-fi, freak-folk art — I think that combination pretty much sums up my aesthetic, a little Bernini, a little Henry Darger. I believe that when you draw you connect to everything you have ever seen and channel it, I call it ‘reaching

into the inspiration sack’ and only pulling out the stones you want. Good drawing uses cultural understanding and personal aesthetics as compositional guides. But also mathematics, hand-eye coordination and scientific knowledge of the material process. Drawing is one of the most involved things a mind and a body can do together in tandem —it’s like figure skating if figure skating could convey centuries-old conflicts about the self and the body.